I don't know. I sent him an email about it but as of this morning I haven't heard back. I was thinking of doing a temp mini-technocrat in my user journal here, what ya think, good idea?
login with a user name and we can debate point by point. All that I mentioned other than my conclusion is googleable data, so if you want to try and dispute it go right ahead.
The dollar continues to tank. The demand for petroleum globally compared to actual production realities are hitting home. Russia will be pricing it's oil in Euro's soon, and perhaps some other major oil nations like Iran and Venezuela. Several large US industries are in medium critical shape financially, GM and Ford got reduced to "junk bond" status last week. The major airlines are in trouble for day to day, let alone their pensions. And we are daily staring at geopolitical unpredictable wildcards like further expansion of the war in the middle east or perhaps some crisis in north korea, etc.
Space is cool, but within a year or so (this is my SWAG on it anyway) you will see some serious restructuring of the US economy in both the private and governmental sectors, it's inevitable now. You simply cannot keep borrowing money to run government (i.e. prinitng up IOUs like FRNs and T bills) and running trade deficits like we have been forever, the rest of the planet is getting tired of it. So this space project could very well have a numerical upwards trend, doubling or tripling if it even gets funded now.
I would expect the military to keep up an interest in space flight (they probably do in the black budgets as well someplace), but I think "civvie" human space flight will be "downsized" in importance as compared to much cheaper normal robotic missions.
This is all speculation, but it's based in economic reality.
I read those previous pieces maureen wrote about PJ and I found them quite odd indeed, seemed sorta viscious in a way. I will admit I missed the details on this one though, although I skimmed both links quickly, I was also doing some other stuff at the same time. That doesn't take away from what I said though, the employment paid versus free, he's still working for them, ie, that makes his boss his employer. I wish him well, either linuxworld gets real with their employees (paid or otherwise), or like I said, he and the other editors can go off and start their own e-zine, free or otherwise, their choice.
BTW, been in the same predicament a few times myself. Worked as a free unpaid moderator for ed yourdon and gary north,on their web boards pre y2k, eventually quit both places from lack of support from "my employer". Comes a time you look at the hours you put in versus "payback" that is valuable to you and you make a decision, simple as that. People work for a variety of reasons, money is just one of them. Right now my meatspace "dayjob" pays me very little, despite being way more than "full time" in conventional hours, but the side benefits make it worthwhile to me. My cyber job pays the internet and phone and a little hardware. Different strokes and all.
...to have another job lined up first before this sort of "line in the sand" comment to your employer. Of course this being the net, you and your other disgruntled editors can just start your own zine pretty easily.
--there's a great need for publish ready electronic tech manuals, at least over on the blue collar side of things. Weekends I work on machinery, I've just come in from having two manuals outside where I can reference them as I work on some small machinery. Sucks. Duh, your hands get oily and stuff. It would be nice if I could just printout those sections I need and not worry about smudging the manuals I have, the deal is, very few *good* mechanical manuals in print ready format exist from the manufacturers. They just scan in a dismal poorly written and poorly drawn master copy and give you that, usually they suck and are unreadable *if* they even have them. Most places just slide out of it with a "see your local service dealer", they don't even provide a bad manual, let alone a good one you can print out.. Well that's an expensive sucky deal as well, like I'm going to drop what I am doing and go haul some piece of crap 30 or 40 miles round trip to get a few tech specs or to look at a drawing, and pay them 60$ an hour for that once I get there when they want you to "drop it off" for "service". Uh huh, great deal for me.... That was one of my fondest hopes with watching the personal computer revolution happen, unfortunately it hasn't gotten much better from my perspective. Perhaps in white collar clean hands IT it's better with tech manuals, don't know really.
...more names, just like they snagged "windows" as a trademarked name, even though there were windows before they used it? Now they own "mobile"? Just great....
This is not an integral total "Firefox" exploit. There's a BIG difference. Editors and submitters, this is another Windows exploit. Please just add that one word to any article summaries if it is appropriate. Firefox is not an operating system. If it affects all operating systems that run Firefox, swell, ignore it, but we have way too many "exploits" headlines that only affect "Windows" yet it's not deemed worthy enough to mention. Please, we all aren't running this "Windows" thing, and the headlines get crawled by search engines. It is more fair and more accurate to include the operating system first, then the application, then say "new exploit". It's not that hard to do. "A new 0 day Windows Firefox exploit has been announced"--something like that. The blame/fame/flames need to go to all the appropriate places, in the appropriate order.
This is a Windows Microsoft article, it should have been noted in the summary. One additional word would have sufficed to make that clearer. Look at it from this angle, this is just an article about some big company releasing some windows software. Well isn't that special! It's not as much about google as it is that MS continues to dominate mind and marketshare, people just assume you *must* be running windows. "Oh, but it runs on firefox". Big deal, who cares, it's still windows as the primary and only platform this new whizzbang application runs on.
No biggee, it's a picky point, just a suggestion. I bet any number of folks are annoyed with it.
With every new google article and "feature" they are coming out with, I am liking them less and less, this is just another example of why. Screw their datamining.
...where a millionaire like Mark Shuttleworth could make a significant difference. Yet another debian clone is cute, but actually attacking the durn hardware problem is even better. You can't rely on ANY of the hardware manufacturers out there to make open source a number one goal, not with the borg still dominating the industry. For that matter he has the loot (and resources to find some more loot from VCs and whatnot) to release desktops servers laptops and pdas all built from the ground up with open source compatability and functionality. And get them on the shelves at the local retailer level all over. That would get some mainstream attention.
Open source will not crack the mainstream in any significant numbers until it's for sale and pre installed on machines at the local level, not mail order or just on the web. That means it's the hardware sellers who hold the keys, including graphics. You can code all de doo dah day long, and it won't matter much, until millions of PCs are shipped with some linux preinstalled,at a competitive price, it will remain niche and small numbers.
I hope these guys in the article can get funding someplace.
The value of Slashdot and other tech discussion forums is in the contributions from the members. It may take awhile to sift through the threads, but in a topic that really interests you you may find a reply that offers some new insight, a link to another project or idea, etc that really gives you something you can use. Frequently even going to the users linked homepages provides some value, as a lot of them wouldn't show up very high in a google search for instance, but still might have some great content.
Hmm, here's a for instance. I started a bookmark folder called "wireless". It is entirely filled with links I culled directly from Slashdot replies on that subject. Sort of like a mini personalised de.licio.us thing.
Just because they weren't wearing western styled clothing designed for the military doesn't mean they weren't wearing uniforms. That's just more neocon FUD. Those are prisoners of war, it's just more conveneient for the neocons to call them something else, that's all. And 'detained"? How about captured or kidnapped instead, let's use real words not spin doctor words. Read some of the docs at the neocon Project for a New American Century to see what was planned for Iraq long before 9-11. They fully intended to invade, just wanted a "pearl harbor" like excuse to do it. funny how that 'event" happend real conveninet like, ain't it? Funny how all the "planes off course" years previous all had fighters on their ass within 10 minutes, but on 9-11 "the system failed". Uh huh, sure it did. It got ordered to "fail" is what really happened.
Too many coincidences to take this story at government face value. This is a coup, just accept reality.
The big fat corporate media news sites will get a 'trusted" rating. The same ones who are *not* covering the three trillion in countefeit cash haul the other day, the ones *not* covering the intense gannon/whitehouse coverup scandal, the ones *not* covering the sibel edmonds 9-11 coverup scandal, and etc. They will be "trusted". Sites covering important news, news that would tend to get people to think a little differently and offer a real difference, will get ignored or buried, same as they are now, just worse.
Google dudes, you reading this? You are going to further entrench globalist medicority fluff crapola and governmental/corporate newsaganda. We've been trying to *get away from that*, it causes most of the problems by keeping people dumbed down and faked out with the "big lie" principle.
We'll see how it shakes out, but on the surface I don't like it already. You click on a random google news story now, it might say "89 more", you go there and there's 89 variations of the same exact AP or Reuters release, and half of those requiring "registration" for your "convenience". Big hairy deal. Like why bother.
some ISP runs me some ethernet to the premises, I'll buy one! Nice for some applications, but you still need a wall socket someplace to start them electrons flowing. With that said, how much juice can you suck out ot the landline before they go nuts on you? I have no idea other than it's probably "not much", probably illegal, impractical and fattening. I need PFTM (Power From Teh Modem)
...large mega billionaires who run even larger corporations who engage in illegal practices and have been gouging people for years shouldn't be supported, they should be serving hard time in club fed for being CROOKS THIEVES AND LIARS and their corporation should have it's charter revoked, the pieces of paper ripped up and cast to the winds.
Because people have a right to not be held back by bogus bugware that is WAY overpriced for what it does.
Because when people go to joe random website it should display in their browser of choice, not look like an abstract painting because they choose to use something other than IE.
Because when people want to do some online shopping or banking, they shouldn't be forced to install an operating system and browser that may not be their choice.
Because people who are all citizens should be allowed to view publically available tax payer funded government documents without being restricted to one computing platform.
Because the internet is for everyone, it is not the domain and property of bogus billionaires.
Because large critical infrastructure shops in the private and public sector should NOT, repeat NOT, be running easily hacked bugware, it's a national security issue. and taxpayers shouldn't be forced to foot the bill for easily hacked crapware either.
Because our economy would be better off with more reasonably priced and more reasonably functional software being available to this "the masses" dude,from ma and pas desktop to "the enterprise", we shouldn't be limited to one billionaires idea of what the net and computing should be and everyone and their cuzzin leroy have to periodically send a large check to turn billionaires into trillionaires.
Because we should be able to buy computers easily that have a choice of OS on them, not be forced to go grovel and beg for something else when we go into any random computer retail outlet.
Because it's a complete ripoff to people to fake them out that joe billionaires crapware products are the "only" way to do things, leaving them stuck with malware infested boxes that they have to drag to the puter fixit shop at 60$ an hour to "fix" every other month when they shouldn't be broken in the first place.
Because establishing the precedent that very expensive software with zero warranties with it that you only get to "use as-is" is another bad idea, we should be able to tinker, change, modify our purchases, to our hearts content, same as we can with a million other products out there.
Because some billionaire bogus doofus doesn't need to "control where you go today" with your computer, it's none of his business what you do with your own machine. A persons machine doesn't need to report in and be analysed and probed by some faceless company someplace if you choose not to.
And because it's a *good thing* to be able to help your neighbor, easily, without worrying about violating some billionaire reactionary goons "profits" or the bogus "law' that protects those expensive no warranty chunks of alleged code. We DON'T NEED some fascist mafia don billionaire computer master overlord, nor his legion of profitable doom running our computing lives.
My opinion only, but Ubuntu took off because a millionaire threw quite a lot of cash at it. Advertising pays, and shipping multiple quantities of free cds to people didn't hurt either. The same effort and cash put someplace else and the rankings would reflect that "Fred's-nix" would have been as "successful".
If Debian as a political org would be a bit more in touch with economic reality, they might have gotten some of that cash and maybe not be so broke.
But basically, I don't see any large difference there with all the other Debian clones, I've tried several. It's still Debian. I think Knoppix is really the first clone to do something completely different and *slick* and I am much more impressed with their efforts.
"But if you try to maintain a core package of the distribution things change. You don't spend most of your time on package development anymore but on fighting the flood of bug reports and inquiries."
well...ya, that's what is important to end users, especially in a commercial setting. And this attitude is why stuff is in perpetual betaware status, people don't care about fixing what is broke. It's your right as a free developer to code whatever you want,please go right ahead and thanks for the efforts, just don't be surprised if most people move on to other projects/distros where "just works" is more important than "ohh, new shiny", and where the larger sums of money/interest/mindshare go.
That was one of my points. Cars used to be cheap, I remember it was very common to only get a 12 month loan on a new car, even for just a regular low on the economic totem pole blue collar guy (that would be me). Now they are 60 months, and they still break down about as much, and it's immensely harder to fix them once they break. All we have gained is more complexity,at a greater cost,initially and maintenance wise, but the reliability isn't 5 times greater, not even close. If it was, I'd say it was a fair trade and wouldn't complain, but it's not. Cars are a worse deal now than they used to be, but they do have more gadgetry to them. That's the tradeoff, I just don't think it's worth it. If I could, and if it was available, I'd much rather buy something like a new vw beetle (old style) or something like a basic two bench seats 6 passenger dodge dart (had both, both got slightly better than 25 MPG too), without all the complexity that new cars have, but you can not get them, all new cars have been electronically rube goldberged way out to eXtreme ludicrous land. Granted, maybe the fly by wire cars now handle better, but quite frankly, I seemed to have missed the necessity of 180 mph commuting lately, despite all the 4 wheel drifts shown in the car commercials. I like the olden days of two for 10$ shock absorbers and a simple tuneup costing 3$ in parts and taking 5 minutes to accomplish.
I see some good things with new cars,don't get me wrong, but as transpo, point A to B, there's nothing really new out there, they still got 4 wheels and an engine, you just pay through the nose now for it, whereas it used to be *cheap*. If they were designed and maintained like you suggest with airplanes, then maybe, but that would requitre government forcing that option, which I honestly wouldn't have a problem with. Too much throw away junk nowadays and it's beggaring people. I've watched it change over the years, people nowadays are living in la la land credit fantasy world, and it's been induced by this throw away culture and by stuff that isn't worth it to fix. A 20 buck do dad no biggee, but 20 to 40 grand cars start to get economically annoying to consider them throw aways.
Well, for some of us anyway, to other people that's still throw away toy price.
They are starting to make the cars so complex that it drives the cost up significantly for initial purchase, and the repair costs get astronomical because it requires a specialist in most cases to *really* fix them, but they still only last a few years before they start to break down and become uneconomical for most people. Catch 22 now. Airplanes on the other hand have high initial cost, high repairs and maintenance costs, but are designed for decades of service, not just a few years. Where are the high tech safer cards with 20 year warranties? the cost has gone up tremendously compared to when I was a kid, yet they still seem to break as much and are much harder to work on for joe average.
No easy choices for joe consumer and land transportation. It's not like you can go buy a brand new cheap car that isn't infested with all sorts of electronic stuff that isn't really necessary. It may be useful, but it's not exactly necessary. You can get older cars of course, but even then it's a high cost to restore them and in a lot of cases they have to be modified to pass emissions, which lowers their actual practicality value by introducing complexity. More stuff bolted on = more stuff to break, simple as that. I mean, new cars now cost what houses used to cost not that long ago, and they still drop in value the same as they always did, drive off the lot, whoops, several thousand gone, then it goes downhill from there. It's a cost/benefits/practicality issue that's quite complex, I don't think it can be really stated that cars are that much more of a deal now just because of all the electronic controls, which are consistently the number #1 consumer complaint with cars and repairs, the electronic control systems nowadays. Blackbox voodoo stuff that even the dealer factory trained guys have a hard time dealing with once they develop bugs.
I looked it up but now I remember reading about it, with theoak trees. bummer. I remember dutch elm disease when I lived in new england, within one decade all those old huge trees were mostly gone. Pity.
hey, jeeps! way cool! We have an 80 cj7 here now (needs a carb that works, need it *badly*, currently have a carter bbd which sucks rubber donkey...whatevers, can't get it right no matter how many times I rebuild it, tweak it, curse at it, love on it, it just won't cooperate) and I've had a 59 window wagon (40 mph top speed no matter what) and a 69 wagoneer and an 80 full size cherokee before.
Have you been following the soybean rust deal from last years hurricane Ivan? It's a natural for this one.
With that said, any sort of open human epidemic might be hard to model, given that there's a possibility of on-purpose spreading. That data might be pretty hard to input, just way too many variables.
We'll probably get to see this though, bird flu in particular could easily take off this summer and spread even wider around the planet, now that they have found out some humans can be carriers and not show symptoms, and of course, wild birds migrating.
I say go 4 brackets instead, whut the heck (if yoiu can make the hole line up with the correct size brackets). Still got the side screw holes for mounting.
Or, go whole hawg but cheaper, just make your own brackets with your own drill and some scrap flat plate.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know. I sent him an email about it but as of this morning I haven't heard back. I was thinking of doing a temp mini-technocrat in my user journal here, what ya think, good idea?
login with a user name and we can debate point by point. All that I mentioned other than my conclusion is googleable data, so if you want to try and dispute it go right ahead.
The dollar continues to tank. The demand for petroleum globally compared to actual production realities are hitting home. Russia will be pricing it's oil in Euro's soon, and perhaps some other major oil nations like Iran and Venezuela. Several large US industries are in medium critical shape financially, GM and Ford got reduced to "junk bond" status last week. The major airlines are in trouble for day to day, let alone their pensions. And we are daily staring at geopolitical unpredictable wildcards like further expansion of the war in the middle east or perhaps some crisis in north korea, etc.
Space is cool, but within a year or so (this is my SWAG on it anyway) you will see some serious restructuring of the US economy in both the private and governmental sectors, it's inevitable now. You simply cannot keep borrowing money to run government (i.e. prinitng up IOUs like FRNs and T bills) and running trade deficits like we have been forever, the rest of the planet is getting tired of it. So this space project could very well have a numerical upwards trend, doubling or tripling if it even gets funded now.
I would expect the military to keep up an interest in space flight (they probably do in the black budgets as well someplace), but I think "civvie" human space flight will be "downsized" in importance as compared to much cheaper normal robotic missions.
This is all speculation, but it's based in economic reality.
might happen, who knows. He's welcome to submit articles at Technocrat. (everyone is)
I read those previous pieces maureen wrote about PJ and I found them quite odd indeed, seemed sorta viscious in a way. I will admit I missed the details on this one though, although I skimmed both links quickly, I was also doing some other stuff at the same time. That doesn't take away from what I said though, the employment paid versus free, he's still working for them, ie, that makes his boss his employer. I wish him well, either linuxworld gets real with their employees (paid or otherwise), or like I said, he and the other editors can go off and start their own e-zine, free or otherwise, their choice.
BTW, been in the same predicament a few times myself. Worked as a free unpaid moderator for ed yourdon and gary north,on their web boards pre y2k, eventually quit both places from lack of support from "my employer". Comes a time you look at the hours you put in versus "payback" that is valuable to you and you make a decision, simple as that. People work for a variety of reasons, money is just one of them. Right now my meatspace "dayjob" pays me very little, despite being way more than "full time" in conventional hours, but the side benefits make it worthwhile to me. My cyber job pays the internet and phone and a little hardware. Different strokes and all.
...to have another job lined up first before this sort of "line in the sand" comment to your employer. Of course this being the net, you and your other disgruntled editors can just start your own zine pretty easily.
...we gots to know! What are the MS Longhorn Devs fav linux distro?
This is important stuff here! heh
--there's a great need for publish ready electronic tech manuals, at least over on the blue collar side of things. Weekends I work on machinery, I've just come in from having two manuals outside where I can reference them as I work on some small machinery. Sucks. Duh, your hands get oily and stuff. It would be nice if I could just printout those sections I need and not worry about smudging the manuals I have, the deal is, very few *good* mechanical manuals in print ready format exist from the manufacturers. They just scan in a dismal poorly written and poorly drawn master copy and give you that, usually they suck and are unreadable *if* they even have them. Most places just slide out of it with a "see your local service dealer", they don't even provide a bad manual, let alone a good one you can print out.. Well that's an expensive sucky deal as well, like I'm going to drop what I am doing and go haul some piece of crap 30 or 40 miles round trip to get a few tech specs or to look at a drawing, and pay them 60$ an hour for that once I get there when they want you to "drop it off" for "service". Uh huh, great deal for me.... That was one of my fondest hopes with watching the personal computer revolution happen, unfortunately it hasn't gotten much better from my perspective. Perhaps in white collar clean hands IT it's better with tech manuals, don't know really.
...more names, just like they snagged "windows" as a trademarked name, even though there were windows before they used it? Now they own "mobile"? Just great....
This is not an integral total "Firefox" exploit. There's a BIG difference. Editors and submitters, this is another Windows exploit. Please just add that one word to any article summaries if it is appropriate. Firefox is not an operating system. If it affects all operating systems that run Firefox, swell, ignore it, but we have way too many "exploits" headlines that only affect "Windows" yet it's not deemed worthy enough to mention. Please, we all aren't running this "Windows" thing, and the headlines get crawled by search engines. It is more fair and more accurate to include the operating system first, then the application, then say "new exploit". It's not that hard to do. "A new 0 day Windows Firefox exploit has been announced"--something like that. The blame/fame/flames need to go to all the appropriate places, in the appropriate order.
Thanks, not a complaint or troll, just a request.
This is a Windows Microsoft article, it should have been noted in the summary. One additional word would have sufficed to make that clearer. Look at it from this angle, this is just an article about some big company releasing some windows software. Well isn't that special! It's not as much about google as it is that MS continues to dominate mind and marketshare, people just assume you *must* be running windows. "Oh, but it runs on firefox". Big deal, who cares, it's still windows as the primary and only platform this new whizzbang application runs on.
No biggee, it's a picky point, just a suggestion. I bet any number of folks are annoyed with it.
With every new google article and "feature" they are coming out with, I am liking them less and less, this is just another example of why. Screw their datamining.
...where a millionaire like Mark Shuttleworth could make a significant difference. Yet another debian clone is cute, but actually attacking the durn hardware problem is even better. You can't rely on ANY of the hardware manufacturers out there to make open source a number one goal, not with the borg still dominating the industry. For that matter he has the loot (and resources to find some more loot from VCs and whatnot) to release desktops servers laptops and pdas all built from the ground up with open source compatability and functionality. And get them on the shelves at the local retailer level all over. That would get some mainstream attention.
Open source will not crack the mainstream in any significant numbers until it's for sale and pre installed on machines at the local level, not mail order or just on the web. That means it's the hardware sellers who hold the keys, including graphics. You can code all de doo dah day long, and it won't matter much, until millions of PCs are shipped with some linux preinstalled,at a competitive price, it will remain niche and small numbers.
I hope these guys in the article can get funding someplace.
The value of Slashdot and other tech discussion forums is in the contributions from the members. It may take awhile to sift through the threads, but in a topic that really interests you you may find a reply that offers some new insight, a link to another project or idea, etc that really gives you something you can use. Frequently even going to the users linked homepages provides some value, as a lot of them wouldn't show up very high in a google search for instance, but still might have some great content.
Hmm, here's a for instance. I started a bookmark folder called "wireless". It is entirely filled with links I culled directly from Slashdot replies on that subject. Sort of like a mini personalised de.licio.us thing.
Just because they weren't wearing western styled clothing designed for the military doesn't mean they weren't wearing uniforms. That's just more neocon FUD. Those are prisoners of war, it's just more conveneient for the neocons to call them something else, that's all. And 'detained"? How about captured or kidnapped instead, let's use real words not spin doctor words. Read some of the docs at the neocon Project for a New American Century to see what was planned for Iraq long before 9-11. They fully intended to invade, just wanted a "pearl harbor" like excuse to do it. funny how that 'event" happend real conveninet like, ain't it? Funny how all the "planes off course" years previous all had fighters on their ass within 10 minutes, but on 9-11 "the system failed". Uh huh, sure it did. It got ordered to "fail" is what really happened.
Too many coincidences to take this story at government face value. This is a coup, just accept reality.
The big fat corporate media news sites will get a 'trusted" rating. The same ones who are *not* covering the three trillion in countefeit cash haul the other day, the ones *not* covering the intense gannon/whitehouse coverup scandal, the ones *not* covering the sibel edmonds 9-11 coverup scandal, and etc. They will be "trusted". Sites covering important news, news that would tend to get people to think a little differently and offer a real difference, will get ignored or buried, same as they are now, just worse.
Google dudes, you reading this? You are going to further entrench globalist medicority fluff crapola and governmental/corporate newsaganda. We've been trying to *get away from that*, it causes most of the problems by keeping people dumbed down and faked out with the "big lie" principle.
We'll see how it shakes out, but on the surface I don't like it already. You click on a random google news story now, it might say "89 more", you go there and there's 89 variations of the same exact AP or Reuters release, and half of those requiring "registration" for your "convenience". Big hairy deal. Like why bother.
some ISP runs me some ethernet to the premises, I'll buy one! Nice for some applications, but you still need a wall socket someplace to start them electrons flowing. With that said, how much juice can you suck out ot the landline before they go nuts on you? I have no idea other than it's probably "not much", probably illegal, impractical and fattening. I need PFTM (Power From Teh Modem)
Because people have a right to not be held back by bogus bugware that is WAY overpriced for what it does.
Because when people go to joe random website it should display in their browser of choice, not look like an abstract painting because they choose to use something other than IE.
Because when people want to do some online shopping or banking, they shouldn't be forced to install an operating system and browser that may not be their choice.
Because people who are all citizens should be allowed to view publically available tax payer funded government documents without being restricted to one computing platform.
Because the internet is for everyone, it is not the domain and property of bogus billionaires.
Because large critical infrastructure shops in the private and public sector should NOT, repeat NOT, be running easily hacked bugware, it's a national security issue. and taxpayers shouldn't be forced to foot the bill for easily hacked crapware either.
Because our economy would be better off with more reasonably priced and more reasonably functional software being available to this "the masses" dude,from ma and pas desktop to "the enterprise", we shouldn't be limited to one billionaires idea of what the net and computing should be and everyone and their cuzzin leroy have to periodically send a large check to turn billionaires into trillionaires.
Because we should be able to buy computers easily that have a choice of OS on them, not be forced to go grovel and beg for something else when we go into any random computer retail outlet.
Because it's a complete ripoff to people to fake them out that joe billionaires crapware products are the "only" way to do things, leaving them stuck with malware infested boxes that they have to drag to the puter fixit shop at 60$ an hour to "fix" every other month when they shouldn't be broken in the first place.
Because establishing the precedent that very expensive software with zero warranties with it that you only get to "use as-is" is another bad idea, we should be able to tinker, change, modify our purchases, to our hearts content, same as we can with a million other products out there.
Because some billionaire bogus doofus doesn't need to "control where you go today" with your computer, it's none of his business what you do with your own machine. A persons machine doesn't need to report in and be analysed and probed by some faceless company someplace if you choose not to.
And because it's a *good thing* to be able to help your neighbor, easily, without worrying about violating some billionaire reactionary goons "profits" or the bogus "law' that protects those expensive no warranty chunks of alleged code. We DON'T NEED some fascist mafia don billionaire computer master overlord, nor his legion of profitable doom running our computing lives.
That's some of the reasons anyway...
%>)
My opinion only, but Ubuntu took off because a millionaire threw quite a lot of cash at it. Advertising pays, and shipping multiple quantities of free cds to people didn't hurt either. The same effort and cash put someplace else and the rankings would reflect that "Fred's-nix" would have been as "successful".
If Debian as a political org would be a bit more in touch with economic reality, they might have gotten some of that cash and maybe not be so broke.
But basically, I don't see any large difference there with all the other Debian clones, I've tried several. It's still Debian. I think Knoppix is really the first clone to do something completely different and *slick* and I am much more impressed with their efforts.
"But if you try to maintain a core package of the distribution things change. You don't spend most of your time on package development anymore but on fighting the flood of bug reports and inquiries."
well...ya, that's what is important to end users, especially in a commercial setting.
And this attitude is why stuff is in perpetual betaware status, people don't care about fixing what is broke. It's your right as a free developer to code whatever you want,please go right ahead and thanks for the efforts, just don't be surprised if most people move on to other projects/distros where "just works" is more important than "ohh, new shiny", and where the larger sums of money/interest/mindshare go.
That was one of my points. Cars used to be cheap, I remember it was very common to only get a 12 month loan on a new car, even for just a regular low on the economic totem pole blue collar guy (that would be me). Now they are 60 months, and they still break down about as much, and it's immensely harder to fix them once they break. All we have gained is more complexity,at a greater cost,initially and maintenance wise, but the reliability isn't 5 times greater, not even close. If it was, I'd say it was a fair trade and wouldn't complain, but it's not. Cars are a worse deal now than they used to be, but they do have more gadgetry to them. That's the tradeoff, I just don't think it's worth it. If I could, and if it was available, I'd much rather buy something like a new vw beetle (old style) or something like a basic two bench seats 6 passenger dodge dart (had both, both got slightly better than 25 MPG too), without all the complexity that new cars have, but you can not get them, all new cars have been electronically rube goldberged way out to eXtreme ludicrous land. Granted, maybe the fly by wire cars now handle better, but quite frankly, I seemed to have missed the necessity of 180 mph commuting lately, despite all the 4 wheel drifts shown in the car commercials. I like the olden days of two for 10$ shock absorbers and a simple tuneup costing 3$ in parts and taking 5 minutes to accomplish.
I see some good things with new cars,don't get me wrong, but as transpo, point A to B, there's nothing really new out there, they still got 4 wheels and an engine, you just pay through the nose now for it, whereas it used to be *cheap*. If they were designed and maintained like you suggest with airplanes, then maybe, but that would requitre government forcing that option, which I honestly wouldn't have a problem with. Too much throw away junk nowadays and it's beggaring people. I've watched it change over the years, people nowadays are living in la la land credit fantasy world, and it's been induced by this throw away culture and by stuff that isn't worth it to fix. A 20 buck do dad no biggee, but 20 to 40 grand cars start to get economically annoying to consider them throw aways.
Well, for some of us anyway, to other people that's still throw away toy price.
They are starting to make the cars so complex that it drives the cost up significantly for initial purchase, and the repair costs get astronomical because it requires a specialist in most cases to *really* fix them, but they still only last a few years before they start to break down and become uneconomical for most people. Catch 22 now. Airplanes on the other hand have high initial cost, high repairs and maintenance costs, but are designed for decades of service, not just a few years. Where are the high tech safer cards with 20 year warranties? the cost has gone up tremendously compared to when I was a kid, yet they still seem to break as much and are much harder to work on for joe average.
No easy choices for joe consumer and land transportation. It's not like you can go buy a brand new cheap car that isn't infested with all sorts of electronic stuff that isn't really necessary. It may be useful, but it's not exactly necessary. You can get older cars of course, but even then it's a high cost to restore them and in a lot of cases they have to be modified to pass emissions, which lowers their actual practicality value by introducing complexity. More stuff bolted on = more stuff to break, simple as that. I mean, new cars now cost what houses used to cost not that long ago, and they still drop in value the same as they always did, drive off the lot, whoops, several thousand gone, then it goes downhill from there. It's a cost/benefits/practicality issue that's quite complex, I don't think it can be really stated that cars are that much more of a deal now just because of all the electronic controls, which are consistently the number #1 consumer complaint with cars and repairs, the electronic control systems nowadays. Blackbox voodoo stuff that even the dealer factory trained guys have a hard time dealing with once they develop bugs.
I looked it up but now I remember reading about it, with theoak trees. bummer. I remember dutch elm disease when I lived in new england, within one decade all those old huge trees were mostly gone. Pity.
hey, jeeps! way cool! We have an 80 cj7 here now (needs a carb that works, need it *badly*, currently have a carter bbd which sucks rubber donkey...whatevers, can't get it right no matter how many times I rebuild it, tweak it, curse at it, love on it, it just won't cooperate) and I've had a 59 window wagon (40 mph top speed no matter what) and a 69 wagoneer and an 80 full size cherokee before.
Have you been following the soybean rust deal from last years hurricane Ivan? It's a natural for this one.
With that said, any sort of open human epidemic might be hard to model, given that there's a possibility of on-purpose spreading. That data might be pretty hard to input, just way too many variables.
We'll probably get to see this though, bird flu in particular could easily take off this summer and spread even wider around the planet, now that they have found out some humans can be carriers and not show symptoms, and of course, wild birds migrating.
Alienware MJ12 mobile workstation would fit the bill there kinda sorta, close enough anyway
I say go 4 brackets instead, whut the heck (if yoiu can make the hole line up with the correct size brackets). Still got the side screw holes for mounting.
Or, go whole hawg but cheaper, just make your own brackets with your own drill and some scrap flat plate.
anyway, simple nice hack.